'Did you continue to release documents?'

RHI InquiryCopyright: RHI Inquiry

Sir Patrick winds up the questioning by asking Dr Crawford if he continued to release government material to third parties after he moved to other departments - namely the departments of agriculture and finance.

There is a pause before he replies:

"I would have had engagement with various players. I don't recall releasing any material but I am conscious of my previous statement.

"So, I'm not going to sit here and say 'No, I didn't release any material', but I don't believe there was any sensitive material released.

'What was the perceived benefit?'

Mr Aiken puts it to Dr Crawford that there must have been some perceived benefit for the sharing of government information.

"There must have been, otherwise you wouldn't do it," says Mr Aiken.

Dr Crawford there was no benefit other than advising the minister. Take a press release as an example, he says, if it is distributed to other stakeholders there would then be less negative media coverage for the minister.

Mr Aiken asks what kind of benefit would come from providing Mr Robinson with advanced notice of a government publication.

Dr Crawford says that in this case he was engaging with energy companies, who would in turn provide him with information about the industry that he could relay back to the minister.

'I'm not calling you a rogue'

Mr Aiken asks Dr Crawford if he knows of other SPADs sending out information to people or organisations outside of government.

Dr Crawford says that, due to the nature of the SPAD role, he would be surprised if his colleagues did not send documents to outsiders.

Mr Aiken stresses that he is trying to be fair to Dr Crawford and says that one interpretation of events is that Dr Crawford was a "rogue operator" sending material outside despite knowing the rules, or that this is a normal pattern of behaviour.

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"I don't believe I was rogue," says Dr Crawford.

"I'm not calling you a rogue," says Mr Aiken.

Dr Crawford laughs: "I appreciate that".

Sir Patrick cuts in to put a stop to this line of questioning. "It is not a matter for this inquiry to see how other departments in this devolved government operate," he says.

'My mother had no interest in the information'

Mr Aiken moves on to another sequence of communication - this time between Dr Crawford and his mother's email account.

One evening, in January 2015, Dr Crawford sent five emails containing briefings on tourism and trade before he was to travel with Mrs Foster on a trade mission.

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Dr Crawford explains: "When I was adviser to the minister, I stayed in a house in Belfast and that’s where I had done most of my work. However I would have went home at the weekends to Tyrone, where I still class as my home.

"On the 25th of January you can see that we were leaving to travel to the trade mission and I would have met the minister at her home, we would have traveled down through Dublin airport.

"There were a number of documents that I wanted to review when I was on the flight. There's a desktop computer linked to a printer at home..."

Dr Crawford says the information was printed and then deleted from his mother's email account.

"Certainly my mother would have never had any interest in any of this information that was sent."

Dr Crawford says he cannot remember the conversation he had with Mr Robinson (above) before he sent him over the documents.

"I believe it was the information in the body of the email that was of value to him. I don’t believe there was any privileged document that was of advantage to him. It would have been more the timeline he was looking for," he says.

Dr Crawford admits, however, that he should not have sent the information to Mr Robinson.

Mr Aiken makes the point that Dr Crawford has, on more than one occasion, sent on privileged information to persons outside of government.

Dr Crawford responds saying: "I don't think it was a widespread habit." He adds that there is context for each example.

A Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) spokesperson says in the article that the RHI’s “primary objective” was to contribute to the UK’s 2020 renewable targets in a cost-effective and environmentally beneficial way.

Dr Crawford says he did not read the article.

BBCCopyright: BBC

Another Guardianarticle, this one a comment piece, reads: "So rich people now run their oversized boilers at full steam, and leave the windows open to cool the house.